Attracting wealth with Feng Shui

Can moving your sofa make you rich? Tamara Pitelen hires a Feng Shui master to turn her home into a money magnet.

Like most people, my knowledge of Feng Shui did not go very deep. I knew it originated in China and had something to do with channeling the flow of energy. If energy got stuck it was bad and the right energy had to be flowing properly if you wanted harmony, health money, love… that sort of thing. I had a vague idea that by moving your furniture or putting a few plants around the house, you could change the flow of energy in your home to attract more money into your life – and it was the attracting more wealth theory that I wanted to test. So, I called up one of Dubai’s best Feng Shui consultants, Cristiano Falconi, and asked him to pop over and assess our villa in The Lakes, Dubai, for attracting more financial abundance. Heck, it was worth a try. When he came over the following weekend, the first thing Cris corrected me on was the belief that there are certain across-the-board rules in Feng Shui that everyone could apply, like putting plants in the corners or not hanging mirrors up in certain rooms. “In Feng Shui, every house is like a person, it has a different soul so it’s very difficult to give generic rules.” So just moving my sofa would not, unfortunately, make me rich. Unless someone had hidden gold bars beneath it. Unlikely. Feng Shui teaches that a person’s life is influenced by three forces; their astrological chart; their home and surroundings, and their destiny. It is only the first two forces that can be changed. Feng Shui is to a building what acupuncture is to the body. It ensures there are no blockages in the meridians of your premises. “Your house can affect 33.3 per cent of your life so the right Feng Shui done in line with your horoscope can affect 66.6 per cent of your life. The other third is your karma and destiny, this we cannot affect,” Cris says.

HOME AND HEART

According to Cris, your home represents your life and each part of your home represents a part of your body as well as an aspect of your life such as health, career, money, relationships, children, etc. in some homes, he said, certain aspects are missing perhaps due to the layout of the house, for example an L shaped building, which impacts the lives of the people living there. “If a house is missing the children part, this is not such a problem for a 55-year-old couple but if you’re a couple in their 30s who want children, your home is not supporting this.” Cris wants to make it clear though that there are no good or bad houses. “There is no bad luck or good luck, there are just energies that support what you want in life and energies that don’t, so the question is, ‘is this house supporting what I want?’ “In May I worked on a big villa in Arabian Ranches. The owner told me, ‘I’ve sold my business, I’m moving into the his villa for two or three years and I don’t want to work, I want to relax.’ “So I checked the energy of the house and I told him, ‘sorry, you will not sit doing nothing in this house, the energy for new projects is just too strong… I give it six months before you are once again very busy with work.’ “The villa was highly charged with new project energy. A new project could be a business, a child, a marriage, and so on. A month later he called me and told me that since he moved into this house, he had already started three new businesses.”

ENERGY WORK

The next weekend Cris comes round for our initial consultation. In all, Cris came to our house three times, the first to take an exhaustive list of measurements, the second to tell us what changes we needed to make in our home based on those measurements, and the third time to review the changes we’d made. On that first day, he noted down our dates of birth and then starting walking around outside the property, taking measurements with a Chinese compass. “I take my compass, which is called the Luopan,” Cris explained. “I take measurements all over your property, from your main door, back door and so on, so the combination of the energy that is entering from the main door and exiting from the back door that is pushing you towards your future, will give me the idea of the energy that you have inside the house. The outside always affects the inside, so during a consultation it is extremely important to check outside your house. “First I check around your villa, do you have another villa attached? Do you have an empty space or a garden? Is it blockedor an open view? Then I pay attention to the form and shape, which kind of plants do you have and what shapes are your plants? From which direction is the energy coming? If you have a road outside, is the traffic coming from the right or the left? Then I have to check if there are any big lights pointing onto your main door, and how is the access and size of your main door and which energy is entering from your main door because the energy that is entering your house will combine with the inside energy as well as with your personal energy, which I get from your date of birth. From this I can see if this house is auspicious for you or which portion of the house is extremely important for you. It’s an in-depth study. “Once I have all this information, I know the strong points and the weak points of the house. Every house has some aspects that are positive, or let’s say strong, and some aspects that are weak so we try to increase health, harmony, money and try to slow down all the bad energy that sometimes attacks the house.”

FENG SHUI VERDICT

On Cris’s second visit, he told us what the numerous measurements and calculations he’d taken had revealed about how our home was affecting our lives as well as what we needed to do to attract more wealth. For a start, he said, the layout of the villa was not ideal. The wall between the kitchen and lounge was blocking energy but since we were renting our villa, there’s not much we could do about that. And it was nothing to worry about he, said, there is no such thing as the perfect Chi home and no matter what the issue, a good Feng Shui practitioner will find a solution. In our home, he said there were several things that were not supporting the flow of wealth, Cris said, including the flower bed at the front door, the aloe vera plants we had in the flower bed (too spikey) and the size of the door – it was too small. “The door is the mouth of the house,” Cris said, “it must be big enough to feed the home with energy.” The main points he made were that we had two rooms supporting money and new projects, these were the downstairs study and the bedroom above it on the second floor. Cris said we had to use these rooms as often as possible and to paint them in shades of green and blue – colours of the sea. He also told us that our villa did not have an aspect that supported children. Luckily, we had no problem with that. In addition, we needed to put a water fountain by the front door and a curtain at the bottom of the staircase – because money energy was flowing down the stairs and straight out the front door – and we needed a small Buddha temple erected in a certain position in the backyard. He also wanted us to severely trim back one of the big palm trees in our back yard because it was, he said, blocking my feminine energy. So, we got to work. We filled the entrance of the house with pretty flowers and plants and moved the aloe vera into the backyard. We installed a water fountain out front, got our palm tree cut back, repainted the study and second bedroom in greens and blues, put a curtain at the bottom of the stairs, put up a small Buddha temple in the back yard, changed the colours in the lounge to white and got rid of all the red accessories. It all took a few weeks and cost us a few thousand dirham. The result? It feels 100 per cent better. Our home feels lighter and more welcoming and a nicer place to be. We’re really happy with the changes. Has it made us rich? Not so far but we’ll need a few more months before this experiment can be called a success or failure. As Cris said though, we need to make some effort as well because the energy can support you and help things flow but it can’t act for you. “It’s up to you to catch the right energy, you cannot sit on the sofa waiting for the Feng Shui to bring you good luck.”

OUR VILLA DIAGNOSIS

We had Feng Shui Master Cristiano Falconi come round to our villa in The Lakes, Dubai, to see what could be done about our increasing wealth and abundance. Cris carried out a consultation in accordance with Chue Style Feng Shui. This knowledge can be traced back to the Imperial Courts of China and to the Chan family of the Song Dynasty in 960AD.

OUTSIDE 1. The outside flowerbed is blocking the flow of Chi (= energy) into the house. It will be very helpful to remove it. If not possible, remove the aloe vera and put some coloured flowers. Cactus is strictly forbidden. Suggested flowers are: a. Tecoma Smithii b. Hibiscus c. Jatropha Integerrima

2. In this corner by the front door it will be extremely auspicious to have a water fountain.

3. The small garden in front of the main door must be rich with coloured flowers.

4. In the backyard, in the direction discussed, you must organise a small temple with a stone Buddha.

5. Trim the big palm tree as discussed.

INSIDE Ground Floor:

1. In the office and in the entrance hall you need to have some green on the walls.

2. In the living room it will be very auspicious to add some purple, burgundy or, if you prefer some green as well.

3. The window’s wall in the kitchen must be navy blue.

4. The stairs are facing the Main Door. You MUST put a curtain before the stairs to stop the money energy flowing out the front door.

1st Floor:

1. Try to use the third bedroom as much as you can. Add green or black. If possible also paint the ceiling in a light tone of green.

2. In the upstairs bathroom it will be auspicious to add four to five stones, like river stones, around the toilet. Definitely not crystals.

The Chinese science of Feng Shui is thousands of years old and was originally available only to Chinese royalty. There are many different Feng Shui schools, all with different viewpoints. Feng Shui is divided into two main branches – modern and classical. The modern school of Feng Shui is popular in the Western world and started getting a foothold in early 1960s. However there is no strong scientific basis to this school and it is mainly based on general rules and assumptions. Modern Feng Shui methods are based on the layout of a space such as house or office and the arrangement of the furnishings and decorative objects to maximize the flow of energy within that space. Modern school is further subdivided into various branches; Black hat feng shui based on Tibetan Buddhism, Intuitive feng shui based on intuition and Ba Gua school based on eight directions. On the other hand, Classical Feng Shui (aka Chue style) has two main branches; Form school and Compass school. Form school Feng Shui focuses on landscape forms such as the shapes of hills and watercourses. It focuses on locating auspicious sites for buildings and burials. The aim of Form school Feng Shui is to benefit from the energy generated by these landforms. This school is effective for external structures only and does not help with the interior layout. The second branch, which is known as Compass school of Feng Shui, is the most powerful. The compass school uses tools including the Luopan, a Chinese magnetic compass, the Lo Shu square and the Ba-gua. This type of Feng Shui further divides into several schools. Eight Mansions is a type of school that focuses mainly on directions of a person based on the date of birth. While Flying Star Feng Shui is based on detailed formulas and takes into consideration the element of time. To introduce Feng Shui principles in your home or workplace, take care in choosing a practitioner who understands the science behind this ancient discipline.

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